Pope’s lauding of Abbas unhelpful for peace

 

By Isaac Yetiv, Ph.D.

 

LA JOLLA, California –A few days after Pope Francis recognized the “State of Palestine,” he honored the “Chairman of the Palestinian Authority” Mahmoud Abbas, in a ceremony at the Vatican, and called him “the Angel of Peace,” thus adding insult to injury. He also insulted History twice:

First, because there is no “State of Palestine” to recognize, and may never will be, due to  the perennial refusal of the Palestinian leaders to accept a Jewish state in their midst and to agree to the necessary compromises. The fallacy that Israel is solely responsible for achieving peace in the Mid-East has been debunked by the successive peace offers made by the Israeli Prime Ministers Rabin,  Barak , and Olmert, each one “improving” on his predecessor by taking more risks, and all strongly endorsed by an American president. It took the Vatican more than forty years to recognize the State of Israel  after its birth in 1948. So what’s the rush to recognize a non-existent state of “Palestine”and add more confusion to the mix?

Second, Abbas is certainly not a man of peace, let alone an “angel of peace,” with its strange theological connotations.Maybe the Pope doesn’t know, but he is surrounded by a host of experts and advisers who should know, or can research, the biography of a man the Pope intended to praise and glorify. I am sure the Pontiff does not want to disregard the injunction of the greatest of the biblical prophets, Isaiah, who denounced those “who call evil good and call good evil…” A little effort at learning the truth would have uncovered many non-angelic and non-peace-generating actions .

Suffice it to cite here two of them: Abbas  wrote an academic thesis, a Ph.D. no less, in Soviet Moscow Lumumba University, denying the Holocaust, accusing the “Zionists”  of collaborating with the Nazis, and at the same time “deciding” that the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust was “only” 300,000, not six million. He also planned and funded the Munich massacre of 1972 and the murder of eleven Israeli athletes. Abbas earned the moniker of “moderate” only in comparison with Hamas, the more radical terrorist organization that has defeated him electorally and militarily,  chased him away from Gaza, and is now a partner in his “government,” leaving him with practically no power , except in the imagination of the Western leaders and now…of the Pope.

The Pope’s recognition , while materially insignificant because nothing will change on the ground, will have deleterious effects on the prospects for real peace because it will embolden the Palestinian leaders in their refusal to negotiate directly with the Jewish state to achieve independence, if that is their real goal, and not their dream of Israel’s annihilation as many in Israel and the world have come to believe.

But that is not the only deplorable consequence of the Pope’s decision; this recognition cum praise will sow confusion in the minds of the majority of good devout Catholics who believe in the “infallibility” of the Holy See, and who acclaimed with fervor the efforts of Pope Francis’ predecessors to bring about a reconciliation of the Catholic church with the Jewish people,  especially John XXIII and John-Paul II who sincerely apologized, and asked forgiveness, for the Catholic Church persecutions of the Jews, for the  Inquisition, the Crusades and the 2,000 years of hatred. More significantly, they purged the Gospels from the most horrible accusation of “deicide” — that the Jews killed Christ. Pope Francis’ action is a step backward; it almost nullifies Vatican II , Nostra Aetate, and brings back the sad memories of recent history. I say “almost” because the Pope may still reconsider, or at least “clarify” and sweeten the pill.

The question is “Why is the Pope doing this, and why now?”  Some observers saw in the uncalled-for and inopportune papal decision a classical act of futile appeasement. Maybe, they explained, this gesture will convince ISIS and other terrorist organizations to behave nicely and cease to kidnap, enslave, rape, burn, behead, and crucify the thousands of Christians that fall in their hands. I see it differently. I asked myself what is special in this Pope that makes him deviate abruptly from the path of his predecessors? And I found my response in his political worldview. Since the moment of “Habemus papam” (We have a Pope) and the white smoke announcing his election, it was clear, from his words and deeds,that  Pope Francis was on the Left of the political spectrum. I won’t be surprised if posterity will see him as the “Socialist Pope.”

Of course, the main tenet of the Catholic Church is to help the poor and the oppressed, a divine edict inherited from the Old Testament. The Torah and the Prophets repeat incessantly the grave injunction “to care for, protect, and defend the poor, the oppressed, the orphans, the widows…and the stranger that lives in your midst.” This concept  was a revolution in bibical times, rejected and mocked by the dominant powers , incomprehensible for the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans. And to my knowledge, the Jews and Israel, continue to honor these commitments more than any other religious or ethnic group alive today.

What the Pope and his advisers seem to ignore is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political one; it has two sides claiming their rights; it went to the UN which reached two main resolutions, 242 and 338, whose main substance is that both sides should arrive at a solution through direct negotiations, which means concessions on both sides. True, the Palestinians appear , falsely in my opinion, as the weak side that needs help , and any act of charity by the Pope may be laudable , but any political intervention like recognition and praise can only encourage them in their intransigence to refuse to negotiate. Why negotiate and make concessions if they can have ALL that they want on a silver platter. But it doesn’t work that way; they didn’t get it from the secular world leaders and they will not get it from the Pope.

To quote the Torah again, four Hebrew words distinguish between “charity” and “justice:” In Exodus 23;3 , we read : “Ve-dal lo tehdar berivo” ( You shall not favor the poor in his legal disputes.)

You can be poor and wrong at the same time.Europe and America have been pouring money to the Palestinian Authority for years –the estimated total surpassed $5 billion, a good part of which filled the coffers of  Arafat, inherited by his wife now living in luxury in Paris, and it was reported that Abbas pays himself one million dollars a month…and “peace” is still far from us and getting farther every day

As an unintended consequence of the Socialist Pope’s political act, he ipso facto joined the ranks of other socialists like the Europeans, the American President, and the corrupt UN . They all continue to believe in theories of failed systems of government,  and to act accordingly, with a shameless display of hypocrisy. For example,if there is a stateless people that has been maltreated by history and still living as a minority, often persecuted, dispersed among four states in the Middle-East, it is the Kurds. Their number is five to six times that of the Palestinians.

They do not threaten their neighbors with annihilation; they sit on contiguous territory,and they have a working government, all the international legal requirements for statehood. We never heard any of the do-gooders proclaim their support for the Kurds’ deserved independent state. The reason is well known : The Europeans, the Americans, the UN, and the Pope don’t want to provoke the ire of the four states (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey) and they fear their reactions. But their eagerness to claim and recognize statehood  for the less-deserving Palestinians will only anger , threaten, and endanger the Jews in and out of Israel.

And, sadly, that is of no consequence, even if Hamas’ rockets are still falling on Israel, Hizballah is sharpening its lethal weapons,  ISIS forces sit in the Sinai and at the border with the Golan Heights, and Iran is frantically racing to produce the bomb, aided and abetted by the Europeans and the American president who pretend to make a “deal to prevent the Iranians from acquiring the nuclear weapon…” or,at least, “to delay its fabrication by ten years…or maybe three…”  Instead of LEADERSHIP , we have now dealership , and a losing proposition to boot.  As the saying goes, “history comes first time as a tragedy, and second time as a FARCE.”

This same feckless “socialist” mentality is responsible for the mess the world is in today. It has pervaded all spheres of human activity (social, cultural, political, financial) , domestically and internationally. It is at the source of the scandals, the corruption, the lies, and the coverups cynically displayed by the government from the president to the former Secretary of State to other elected officials. It made possible such pronouncements by President Obama like ” If you like your plan, you can keep it ‘ or ” If you own a business, you didn’t build it,” to cite only two of so many examples that have become the butt of spicy jokes.

The same mentality presided over 50 years of “the war on poverty” that has cost 15 TRILLION dollars, and the poverty is still ominous, with 53 million Americans on food stamps and over 18 Trillion in national debt.

The same mentality allowed the mayor of Baltimore to order her police to stand down and “give space” for the rioters to burn and destroy their city, saying “it’s only property.”  while the police dodged the bricks thrown at them and stood impassive like lead soldiers in a children game.  “They are not thugs,” she said, “they are just kids.”

I conclude with one example that will illustrate the same mentality, related to the Pope’s “recognition and praise:”  Every few years, Hamas starts a war with Israel with a barrage of thousands of rockets. Israel, in self-defense, retaliates with great devastation in Gaza. And what do the do-gooders do? At the UN, they condemn Israel, of course. But outside the UN, Europe and America lavish on  Hamas hundreds of millions of dollars to “rebuild,” with no strings attached, not even, “please don’t start another war …no more money…”and they cynically know that the  rebuilding  includes new tunnels and other fortifications to prepare for the next war. Could the do-gooders be so dumb? And could their taxpayers be so dumber!

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Yetiv is a freelance writer and lecturer based in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla.  You may comment to him at  issac.yetiv@sdjewishworld.com or post your comment on this website provided that the rules below are observed.

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